Le Franco Phoney

A few weeks ago, I took some friends to look at the picturesque views from the Col des Aravis. There was snow, green grass and wild mountain goats all visible nearby, and Mont Blanc was bright white in the distance. A rumble murmured in the distance when I took the photo, pictured above. I wondered if it was thunder, but the sky was blue and the only clouds are the light, fluffy ones you can see which caressed the mountain peaks of l’Etale as they climbed up from the other side and dropped down into the Col des Aravis.

The rumble became louder, and I noticed that snow was sliding off a rock (pictured above the red square in the photo above), causing a white and brown flow of ice and rocks which you can see in the other photo.  In the first photo, the snow has fallen more than 50 metres below the massive rock drop. It looks tiny, but the photo doesn’t show the depth as well as the height. My trusty map does! Imagine standing nearby when so much compacted, icy snow and large, sharp rocks are tumbling, and it’s easy to see how suffocation isn’t the only risk for those caught in avalanches.

The second photo shows just how far an avalanche can travel. The brown river started off slowly, then gained speed over the next rocky outcrop before slowing down towards the bottom right of the photo. It took more than a minute to get there, which seems long and very slow until you remember that the red square alone is more than 50 metres. Nobody could outrun an avalanche of this size, force and speed. Luckily, we were at a safe distance to appreciate the beauty of the snow falling to the left of the rock where it started.

My friends, who were visiting from Australia, had never seen snow, let alone an avalanche. Mother Nature put on an impressive show for them, and I hope they enjoyed it. I certainly did.

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I took this photo just a few days ago, with fresh, powdery snow covering all of La Clusaz. With so few tourists in the resort at this time of year, it took longer than usual for La Balme and the rest of La Clusaz to get tracked out. In fact, l’Etale is still pretty much untracked, as it closed a week ago.

This year has produced the best for snowfall that I’ve ever seen in the Alps, and I feel very lucky to have been here in the Aravis to enjoy it. However, my balance between sport and productivity became somewhat unbalanced, leading to late nights to catch up on work, and early mornings to catch first lifts and yet more knee-deep powder. I’m not the first to experience these imbalances. An English friend in Méribel chose a completely different path. She was struggling to find time between working, snowboarding and socialising, so she gave up snowboarding. “Something had to give,” she said, “and this year, it’s sport. Next year I might stay in more.” Having spent years as a ski bum, giving up an income so I could ski, I don’t understand the concept of giving up a snow sport. Living here would make it all the more difficult!

The French seasonal workers in La Clusaz are just as much of a mystery. They seem to leave the resort within days of their jobs ending, even with this powder falling and very few people tracking it out. These are ideal conditions, and even the seasonal workers have left! Why would they come here and endure working months of long hours in a bitterly cold and expensive place if they don’t get their own sports bonus at the end of it?

I’m certainly not complaining: it means more fun in the snow for me without the crowds.

The ski season ends this Sunday, so I’ll be back on track with work and blog entries — I promise.

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Pictured is how La Balme looked yesterday at around midday. You can see untracked powder and just one guy – my visiting friend – on the entire slope. There are a couple of people on the chairlift, but it was a very quiet day. Had this been any other month, the chairlift would be packed and the powder would be completely tracked out. This is one of the pros of skiing in April! However, there are cons. I’ve made a list of both pros and cons, below.

The Pros

Not many people bother skiing after Easter, so the rest of us get more fresh tracks when the powder inevitably falls, with no queues at any of the lifts increasing sliding time! La Clusaz and Le Grand Bornand, like most resorts, ten to produce bottle necks of traffic early in the morning and later in the day during peak times. By April, the only traffic jams are caused by deer who always appear randomly at this time of year near the roads.

April is usually warm and sunny, and at altitude, the sun is strong. Stopping for lunch involves sunglasses and stripping down to a t-shirt, ensuring plenty of vitamin D after being starved of it all winter.

The sunlight streaming in by 7am makes it much easier to get up for first lifts, and getting home after last lifts is much more enjoyable when it’s not dark and cold. Things get more sociable at the end of the season as a result of all these pros, and by mid-April, seasonal workers’ farewell parties happen almost every night.

The Cons

It’s not all sunshine, parties and powder though. The sun melts that fluffy white stuff much quicker in April, so unless you’re there soon after the snow has fallen, it will turn to mush. Hiking to areas that stay powdery for days in February tend to last just a few hours in the warm April air.

Another problem in La Clusaz is that the pistes close more regularly in April. Last year, the Fernuy télécabine, which connects one of the five peaks of La Clusaz to the rest of the resort, was closed for weeks due to the risk of avalanche taking out a pylon. Getting to any other part of the resort involved a flat green piste and then lots of lifts, or a bus back to town.

With fewer people around, I suspect the lift company is less motivated to open some of the lifts on bad weather days, which might be why I was stuck at l’Etale a few days ago. The fresh snow on the lower areas had turned to mush by midday, and the peaks were all closed due to strong wind. The usual access back to town — via the Transval télépherquie and the Combe du Juments chairlift — was impossible because of this ‘strong wind’. The alternative is a flat, green piste that crosses three roads. On a snowboard, this isn’t much fun, having to unbuckle and rebuckle, then push along with one foot most of the way on the slow, spring snow. Buses are an alternative, but at this time of year in La Clusaz, the bus service is reduced, and rather than wait for an hour and a half, I hitched back to town.

I haven’t talked about the biggest pro of all, which makes all the cons worth it: the Defi Foly. The final weekend here in La Clusaz is all about people throwing themselves into freezing cold water at Les Confins to see who can get the furthest. The event ensures a festival atmosphere and a distraction from the sadness (and denial) that the ski season is finally over. What better way than to end the season on a high?

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If you look hard enough at this photo, you’ll see someone in yellow ski pants climbing what appears to be a concave piece of cliff to the top of Le Croix (“The Cross”) up at La Balme in La Clusaz. That’s local hero Candide Thovex. He climbed to the top with his skis and poles, then cruised down, making the descent look easy. It’s not.

Candide has been to lots of places around the globe to introduce his film, which talks about how he grew up loving moguls, then adapted traditional ski jumping into his own style, becoming the World Champion Freestyle Skier, breaking his back on Big Bertha (a jump at La Balme built each year for the Candide Invitiational), recovering, and becoming the World Champion Freeride Champion just two years later. It’s an interesting and inspirational story, with lots of La Clusaz moments.

After months of introducing his film in different countries and cities, Candide returned to his hometown, where La Clusaz aired the film for free on two separate nights. This is a guy who is pretty famous around the world, and hoards of locals and tourists lined up to watch his film. I was in the crowd, although I’d already seen the film on DVD. The mountain shots are massive, and a big screen is best for viewing!

The film was great, but the kids were pretty entertaining too. Candide was there to introduce the film in his usual down-to-earth way. He then mentioned the giveaways, producing hats, t-shirts, a helmet and a few other goodies. The front of the cinema became a gaggle of kids running around saying “cadeau!” (“gift”) and demanding the goodies. Candide seemed to think it was pretty entertaining too, throwing items into the crowd with a big smile on his face.

But back to the film. If you get a chance to see Few Words on the big screen, take it. The filming is truly beautiful, and the talent and ability of that French man simply enhances it further.

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Last week in La Clusaz, this was the scene down at the Champ Guiget area down by the ice rink in La Clusaz. Can you tell what’s happening? Is it a battle of machines against humans? Is there going to be a really odd game of hockey?

On the left are the piste bashers (aka, groomers, mogul munchers or in French, dameuses). On the right, are the crowd of people who have just downed the freebie vin chaud, hot chocolate and Reblochon cheese. The queue half an hour earlier at the stand offering the freebies was massive, and I wondered if the crowd would stay once they’re received their free drink and cheese. Stay they did. So, are they ready to do battle?

There was no battle.

There was no puck.

There was no ballet.

Dameuse ballet was promised, and I’m pretty sure that promise killed a ballerina somewhere in the world. The damesuses made their way, one-by-one, down the hill, then lined up side-by-side. The ballet — I think — involved a couple of the snow ploughs at the front of the machines getting lifted a few centimetres into the air and being wobbled around. I’d been expecting a few swift turns close to other dameuses, or at least some appropriate music while they reversed backwards and forwards. I wondered if maybe there would be a few girls in tutus on skis twirling behind the big machines, or jumping over them from big kickers doing ballet moves at the same time.

The drivers turned off the engines and got out. That was it. On the upside, the crowd was allowed to climb into the drivers’ seats and get a feel for what it must be like to drive one of these things. This was the highlight!

Next year, La Clusaz, can you ditch the whole ballet idea and just go for joy rides instead?

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Hidden under that pile of snow is the outdoor ping pong table in the village of Saint Jean de Sixt. I took this photo back in January, and we’ve had even more snow since then. There’s no point taking a photo now because it’s just one big mound of snow.

Back in January, the table had already started to buckle under the enormous weight of the snow. On a different angle, I could see that the wood had formed an arc in the middle, making any future game of table tennis more for a challenge. But can the table survive such a snowy winter? I think it’s damaged beyond repair. A sad time for the ping pong table of St Jean de Sixt, but thankfully, there’s another one under cover just around the corner. Let’s hope they move it out into the sunthis summer.

This is the third and final post about how to annoy the locals merely by celebrating a birthday.

After causing frowns for asking for a drink in a bar in Croix Fry, then paying far too much for terrible service and not much food for dinner, the birthday of my French friend Elodie was almost over. The fun part had arrived – sliding down the blue piste from Beauregard back to Croix Fry after climbing it earlier on the way to the refuge.

Our group had brought a variety of objects to slide back down on, from the local parait sledge to snowboards and skis. The piste had been groomed and light rain was falling, making the piste soft and deep to step on. We hurtled down the first hill, then reached a flat area and paused while a dameuse (a machine that flattens the pistes) approached. A dameuse‘s function is a serious one: over the course of a day, a ski run will get bumpy and icy in places, and there may be mountains of solid, man-made snow ready to be spread across the piste. The driver of a dameuse must not only flatten the bumps, cover the ice and spread the new snow, but also ensure the camber is maintained across the piste. They work at night so that the pistes are in pristine condition in the morning for everyone to enjoy.

The piste we had just slid down had been flattened, and the wetness of the snow meant our marks were very obvious, with footsteps, toboggan lines and even dog paw prints embedded in the flat, previously perfectly groomed piste. When the driver of the dameuse saw the damage we had done, he drove very close to our group and put the brakes on. We said ‘bonsoir‘ in high spirits, and one of our party pointed to Elodie and said in French that it was her birthday. The driver was unimpressed. ‘So?’ he said. ‘Look what you’ve done to the piste. I spent ages flattening it and now it’s damaged.’

Of course he was right, but given that there are at least two restaurants open in the evenings at Beauregard, this must be a regular, even nightly, problem. Do the locals expect us to walk in the heavy, deep snow on the side of the piste when we all live here for the joy of sliding down the mountains? What’s the point in walking to a restaurant in the middle of nowhere if you can’t enjoy the thrill of a night-time slide on the way home? Has La Clusaz not thought about perhaps preparing this piste later in the night or first thing in the morning? I know that some work in the morning because they hold up the opening of La Balme after the security staff have declared it safe for skiing after a big dump of snow. Why not do the same at Beauregard?

But back to The Night Of The Angry Man In A Dameuse. He ranted for a few minutes about the state of the piste and a few of us said sorry. His rant continued and he was aggressive with his words. I wondered if everyone else felt as much like a naughty child being told off by an angry teacher as I did. He drove off in his dameuse, missing a snowboarder perched on the side of the piste by centimetres — perhaps to emphasise his anger. If his over-the-top anger hadn’t already spurred some of us on to dig more heavily into his piste, his closeness to one of our group fueled the motivation for the rest of us. We hung around until he was out of sight, then carried on down the piste towards Croix Fry. Had he found us again, I suspect we would have witnessed a scene out of a C-grade horror film (surely named ‘The Night Of The Angry Man In A Dameuse‘), and I wouldn’t be here to tell the story!

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Public services in France, like most countries, vary in quality and accessibility.

This advertisement in Annecy displays the faces of local public servants — lovely smiling faces, like Sebastien’s, above. Just last week, I had a positive experience at the Annecy prefecture (council), where the new kid handed me the forms I needed without making me to take a number for the queue, then complimented me on my spoken French.

However, that’s the first positive experience I’ve had at the prefecture, with most visits taking longer than expected: someone once jumped the queue and took my spot, and the reception lady always tuts about incomplete paperwork, then gives in with a sigh when I insist I have everything listed on the official paper in front of her. Twice, I’ve arrived to find a sign that says the office is closed due to exceptional circumstances. Opening for those four-and-a-half hours per day is too long, perhaps?

Sebastien here is probably sneering, thinking of ways to make a simple request from the member of the public into a week-long effort for that person.

But that’s just the prefecture, and I do feel for public servants who have to answer the same old questions day in, day out. So what’s the excuse for La Clusaz?

The ski resort opened for the weekend of 1-2 December due to so much snow, and they had the busiest opening weekend ever. They must have expected a similar situation last weekend after more snow fell during the week, so you’d think they’d get the roads as clear as possible the night before, then start work early in the morning to remove the overnight snow. Yet the roads were clogged not only with snow, but with snow-clearing trucks and tractors which caused a hold-up of traffic through town before the lifts had even opened. Carnage continued outside the town centre, with the roads so poorly cleared that a truck was stuck on a corner near the La Balme ski area, and cars lost traction on the alternative route up, blocking it too. No worries: the top section of La Balme never opened, and the bottom section opened closer to 11am than 9am, and those waiting couldn’t even access the few other areas open because the Fernuy lift didn’t open until after midday. But the (non-public service) ticket office were still charging people €28 for a day ticket. Safety is obviously a priority, so piste closures were inevitable, but if you’re advertising an early opening to the public, at least prepare all the roads before 9am, and offer a price that reflects the limited skiing options.

That grin on Sebastien’s face is perhaps his relief that he had to work on Saturday morning instead of navigating the roads in La Clusaz. Wait; the prefecture isn’t open on weekends either. So, well done to the person who put this poster up. It’s now soggy and flaky, which seems like the perfect advertisement for public services around these parts.

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Pictured is the Saint Jean de Sixt roundabout and the back of the Beauregard peak of La Clusaz in the background, as well as a truck being filled with snow to dump in the river.

Yes, there’s been so much snow all the way down the valley that trucks are taking it away. What I love about this photo is the red flashing light on the top of the truck’s cabin: it’s surrounded by snow and it barely shows up as a slight pink tinge. Nobody has bothered removing the snow from the snow-removing truck.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this much snow in St Jean de Sixt, even during February, when the snow has normally had time to build up over a few months. With around a metre of powdery white stuff in the village, the top of La Clusaz must be pretty good right now.

After days of seeing snow falling from a white sky and the distant forest and mountains shrouded in cloud, the blue sky is finally poking through and the sun is coming through. Would you like to see some more snowy photos with the sun glistening?

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With snow on the ground here in Saint Jean de Sixt, and the partial opening of La Clusaz happening this weekend, the locals are happy. The man driving this car was particularly happy when he arrived home and parked his car. He did three fantastic donuts on the road, which was covered with a layer of ice, then powdery snow on top of that — perfect for making snow donuts.

He can keep his snow donuts: I’m off to La Balme to check out the snow. Happy Saturday!

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